Making a commitment to do something you know is going to hurt is a super focused version of what we do everyday. I chose to be a fighter for a big chunk of my life. This is a profession that hurts quite a bit and you can’t avoid it. You are going to hit people and they are going to hit you. I don’t care how many times you fight, you will be scared every single time. You are going to be scared daily in training too. Every time you train it hurts. You are going to be tired but still have to keep going – that hurts. You have to spar – that hurts. You are going to have good days and bad days – they hurt in non physical ways.
Every person has choices to make daily and things to do that hurt in various ways. Pain is just a part of life. We all deal with it differently. Some people run to it to get it over with and others avoid it as long as they can. Being a masochist is not healthy. We need to accept pain and deal with it, not revel in it. I trained myself to use the fear of it and the actual experience as fuel to keep going. When things get hard, we have a choice; quit, coast, or keep going. I trained myself to go harder to get thru it. This is what works for me, you have to figure out what allows you to sleep well at night.
I can say that I ended up in the same situation just about every fight; I would find myself in the bathroom taking a nervous poop, wondering if anyone would notice if I just didn’t come out or snuck out the back door? I wanted to run away so bad! I was questioning everything; why didn’t you go run that 1 day, why did you coast in that session 3 years ago, why, why, why…..? All this negative crap would flood into my brain while taking a literal nervous crap. What I chose to do next has defined me. I wiped my ass, pulled up my pants, and told that negative voice to shut the fuck up. That weird process put me in the zone by giving me the very clear choice of giving in to all my fears and being my worst self or choosing to go forward and give myself the best chance to be my best self. I have never ran, I have always fought and I have never regretted moving forward.
I had to face another human being who trained just as long and hard to hurt me as I did to hurt them. The stress is enormous. Not everyone will fight another human after months of focused training, but we all have to fight something. The pressure may not be as intense and it may be more at times than what I went thru, but the reality is that we all go through the same fear and apprehension that leads to the big question point – are you going to quit, coast, or go for it?
How we answer the question defines the success or failure of our life. You can make a fortune but feel a failure because you know how you have responded under duress. You have to recognize the process and make a decision on how you want to resolve it. If you are quitting or coasting, you have to be honest and admit it to yourself. If you are OK with it, I have nothing for you. If you want to change it you just have to start pushing back and fighting on. It is not easy but it is worth it.
There is no secret to pushing through adversity. It is a choice. You either do it or you don’t. You either embrace fear or you use fear as fuel. Don’t overthink it, just make a decision and go with it. Do this enough times, it will become your habit.
Brian Wright